A virtual machine is, for instance, software code that creates a virtual environment where a particular type of computer environment is emulated. A virtual machine may also be called an emulator or an interpreter. As one example, the JAVA™ virtual machine is software that emulates an environment where programs written in the JAVA programming language can be executed. JAVA is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, Calif.
Similarly, other languages, such as C#, Ruby, Python, etc., run inside their own respective virtual environments. Moreover, there are other types of virtual machines that emulate an entire computing architecture. For example, there exists virtual machines that emulate the Intel® IA32 architecture (e.g., QEmu, VMWare).
Today, virtualization is becoming an even more important part of the computing spectrum. Virtual machines are very prevalent and are continually growing in popularity. Virtual machines can run independent of one another or one virtual machine can run on another virtual machine (i.e., nested virtual machines).